Come join us in Georgia for the ultimate race weekend party: GRM Speedfest at The Classic Motorsports Mitty May 2-4. Once again, we'll take care of the infield entertainment during HSR's Road Atlanta historic race weekend with car corrals, autocross runs and a huge party at the Moss Pub with Moss Motors, complete with a dart tournament.
Ford Power is the Mitty's theme this year, and both old and new models will be featured. Classic Fords will do battle in the HSR run groups, while the weekend will also feature the debut race for the new Ford Racing Mustang Challenge for the Miller Cup presented by BFGoodrich Tires.
This series — sanctioned by Grand-Am, the same people who run the Rolex 24 At Daytona — recalls days gone by of production-based door-slammers fighting it out for world domination. Each competitor must run the Ford Mustang FR500S, a factory-built racer based on the latest Mustang GT. Each car comes from the factory ready to race, down to the roll cage and safety gear.
Mazda is again sponsoring the event and will again bring several of their historic cars to the track. If you have ever wanted to see some of the world’s best rotary-powered racers up close, this would be your chance. Mazda fans can also enjoy the SCCA Pro Mazda MX-5 Cup Series. Thanks to Kumho tires, they'll also have a chance to autocross an MX-5.
Until recently, most Comcast systems passed all HD as is from the content provider, without any added compression or quality reduction. In response to competitive pressures from DirecTV and Verizon FiOS, Comcast recently decided to sacrifice some quality to improve quantity. By early April, most Comcast systems will recompress and degrade their HD, much like DirecTV and Dish Network do on their MPEG-2 channels. This creates room for new HD channels without the need to eliminate a significant number of analog channels.
Previously, Comcast allocated a maximum of two HD channels per 38.8Mbps QAM, so each channel had the full 19.4Mbps available if needed. Now, with the addition of new channels, Comcast is squeezing three HD channels into each 38.8Mbps QAM. Furthermore, some existing QAMs with two HD channels are being recompressed in preparation for new channel additions.
But what does that mean? How much difference is there, really?
To find out, I decided to compare the quality of the same programs on Comcast and Verizon FiOS. I recorded the same program from the same channel, at the same time, on both Comcast and Verizon FiOS in N. VA. I compared the size and bitrate of each MPEG-2 recording, as well as the subjective quality with video.
When I was in Pittsburgh visiting my parents last weekend I got to see Verzion FiOS in action. All I can say is WOW!
You can take a person that’s playing on the expert levels in Rock Band on the drums and put them on a real drum set, and they can play the drums. And I watched this happen with a Q&A staff of 25-30 people. Maybe 2 or 3 of those had experience of being drummers, but they’ve been playing the game for months now, and what we’ve got is 30 drummers in the Q&A department who are pounding away in the Hard and Expert settings. These people have learned the fundamentals of drums, and this isn’t abstracting fundamentals — you can put these people on a drum set and they have some basic skills now. As a payoff for playing a video game, that’s incredible! Rock Band is going to be out there training this wave of new young drummers, and that’s a really exciting aspect of the project for us.
I'm working on a presentation for work. The first slide has Bruce Lee on it and a quote from Enter The Dragon. I have a feeling this powerpoint is going to rule!
Disclaimer: This is what happens when you work on a presentation while drinking several pitchers of Stella in a Mellow Mushroom.
I am going to be in town this weekend. You up for catching a drink one of the nights or joining in for oysterfest on saturday afternoon with a bunch of us?
[ Video Link ] I'll go to oysterfest. As if that flash video wasn't compelling enough.
Oyster Crawfish Festival with Heavy Mojo, The Squirrelheads, Fighting Foo, & Sundogs Saturday, March 29th 12pm Tickets on Sale now $10 in advance Ticket prices will increase Thursday to $15! may increase to $30 at the door
THE EATZ Join Us Rain or Shine for 4,000 lbs of Atlanta's Best Crawfish prepared by the Catering Cajun! Enjoy a 2lb serving for only $10.00 and fresh beer battered oysters flash fried and served with remoulade for $8.00.
Since people seemed to like the Akira motorcycle, NW thought he'd mention the Mach 5 on display at the New York Auto Show.
Also appearing on the show floor are some unique vehicles that first came to life on-screen, including the Mach 5, a prop car from the upcoming "Speed Racer" film.
What Software Development can learn from Formula One
Topic: Technology
10:52 am EDT, Mar 23, 2008
The F1 World Championship started in 1950. Early years were notoriously dangerous, including spectators who stood on the kerb of whichever road it was they were racing down. Essentially it was all-or-nothing: if everyone kept on the track, no-one got hurt; if someone went off then lack-of-limbs was the best case scenario. ... So what has this got to do with software? Well, I think there are direct parallels; the history of software is very similar. Thankfully, very little software is responsible for life-and-death issues, although there has been many instances of deaths being directly attributed to faulty software; the failures of software are mostly financial. Money is lost due to either: a) projects being abandoned or significantly over-running; or b) faulty or inefficient software in production. ...
So, how can the software development process improve? How did Formula 1 get to it's current very good safety record? The answer, isn't technical. Technology changes like HANS devices, etc., definitely have worked; but most of the shocking incidents of the 1970's and early 1980's were avoidable. They were caused by lack of preparation (e.g. fire-extinguishers around the track), or lack of communications (e.g. between cars and marshals).
1. Lack of complacency; no-one goes round saying "but why would two cars crash? You need to make a case before I can approve that new helmet".
2. Lack of buck-passing: Race control, from a safety point-of-view, is the ultimate responsibility of one man. He doesn't need to get approval from Bernie Ecclestone before calling out a Safety Car; he has the power. Whilst sporting decisions are made by a panel of stewards, safety issues are dealt with immediately. ...
The moral of the story: responsibility is meaningless without power. If you genuinely want quality, you have to have in your team a single "quality manager" - a person who will be rewarded or sacked based on the fitness-for-purpose of the end deliverable. And, which is even more important, this person must not be in a position where he can be over-ruled on quality issues by other managers.
We recently started taking that approach to quality assurance at work. A single QA person can stop a release. They no longer report to the development manager of the product they're responsible for assuring quality in. Hopefully this will mean less fiery, fiery deaths.
Clearly, after the first day of practice for the Malaysian Grand Prix, it is going to be close between McLaren and Ferrari for the rest of the weekend. That is an obvious conclusion to a day that saw several teams running light to achieve apparently promising times.
Generally, the new surface at Sepang required some rethinking on set-up, but most drivers seemed content with the balance they achieved on Bridgestone’s hard and medium tyres; the major problem for some was in getting the best out of them over a single lap, ready for qualifying.
McLaren Lewis Hamilton, 1m 36.626s, P5/1m 35.055s, P1 Heikki Kovalainen, 1m 36.556s, P3/1m 36.512s, P7 McLaren did not rise to the bait this morning as Ferrari set the pace, and for most of the afternoon the red cars continued to rule. But then Hamilton put on the softer tyres and got going for lap times. He was happy with his MP4-23’s consistent pace. His only real problem was with the gear selection at the end of the morning session, but it did not require a change of unit as was first thought. Kovalainen was the faster runner in the morning, and felt he had made a steady start to his weekend as he made progress with chassis set-up.
Ferrari Felipe Massa, 1m 35.392s, P1/1m 35.206s, P2 Kimi Raikkonen, 1m 36.459s, P2/1m 35.428s, P3 Ferrari set the pace all morning, and for most of the afternoon. Massa was fastest in the former, after Raikkonen rolled to a halt after a misunderstanding over fuel load saw him run short. Both drivers said they were happy with the F2008’s performance over a lap on both tyre compounds, though Massa reported that he could not get the best out of his second set of soft tyres in the afternoon when he was upstaged by Hamilton.
